How to Create Excel Charts

How to create Excel charts is one of the most useful skills you can learn in the program. Charts turn rows of numbers into pictures that people understand in seconds, making it easy to spot trends, compare results, and find the outliers that deserve a closer look.

Whether you are preparing a monthly report, analyzing sales, or presenting to your team, the right chart makes the point for you. The wrong chart, or a cluttered one, hides it.

This guide explains the basic steps for creating any chart in Excel, then walks through seven chart types with an example dataset and a finished chart for each. It covers when to use each type, how to customize a chart, and the most common mistakes to avoid. It also includes a free chart builder that recommends a chart for your data.

How to Create a Chart in Excel: The Basic Steps

Every Excel chart starts the same way, whatever type you choose. Once you know these steps, you can create any chart in under a minute.

First, organize your data in a simple table. Put category labels in the first column, such as regions or months, and give each series of numbers its own column with a clear header. Avoid blank rows and merged cells inside the range, because they confuse Excel's chart detection.

Next, select the data, including the headers. Then go to the Insert tab and choose a chart from the Charts group. If you are not sure which one to use, click Recommended Charts, and Excel will suggest options based on the shape of your data.

Excel places the chart on your worksheet. From there, click the chart and use the Chart Design and Format tabs, or the small buttons that appear beside the chart, to add titles, labels, and styling. Microsoft's guide to creating a chart from start to finish covers the same process.

Two keyboard shortcuts make this even faster. With your data selected, press Alt and F1 to insert the default chart right on the worksheet, or press F11 to create it on its own chart sheet.

Which Excel Chart Should You Use?

Choosing the chart comes down to the question you want the reader to answer. The table below matches common questions with the chart that answers them best.

1. Column Charts

Column charts are ideal for comparing values across categories. They display data as vertical bars, which makes differences between groups easy to see, and they also work well for showing change across a small number of periods.

Excel offers three main variations. A clustered column chart places the series side by side within each category, so you can compare them directly. A stacked column chart stacks the series on top of each other, showing each category's total as well as its parts. A 100% stacked column chart shows each series as a percentage of the category total, which is useful when the mix matters more than the size.

Example: Comparing Sales by Region

Imagine you have monthly sales for four regions over the first quarter.

To create a clustered column chart, select the whole range including the headers, go to the Insert tab, choose Insert Column or Bar Chart, and select Clustered Column.

The chart makes it obvious that North leads every month and that every region grew by March. If you would rather group the bars by month instead of by region, click the chart and choose Switch Row/Column on the Chart Design tab.

2. Line Charts

Line charts are the best way to show trends over time. They connect data points with a line, so rises, dips, and turning points stand out immediately. Use them whenever your categories are time periods such as days, months, or quarters.

A standard line chart plots each series as its own line. A stacked line chart adds each series on top of the one before it, and a 100% stacked line chart shows each series' share of the total over time. Stacked lines can be hard to read, so the standard version is usually the better choice.

Example: Tracking Monthly Website Traffic

Suppose you want to compare website visits for the first six months of this year with the same months last year.

Select the data, go to Insert, choose Insert Line or Area Chart, and select Line with Markers.

The two lines show that traffic is up every month compared with last year, and that the gap is widening. That is a story a table of numbers would take much longer to tell.

3. Pie Charts

Pie charts show how parts make up a whole. Each slice represents one category's share of the total, so they work only when the values add up to something meaningful, such as 100% of the market or a full budget.

A doughnut chart is a pie with a hole in the middle, which leaves room for a total or label in the center. Both work best with five or six slices at most. With more, the slices get too thin to compare, and a bar chart is a better choice. Pie charts also cannot display negative values.

Example: Market Share of Different Brands

Select the brand names and percentages, go to Insert, choose Insert Pie or Doughnut Chart, and select Pie. Then click the Chart Elements button and turn on Data Labels to show each percentage on its slice.

The chart shows at a glance that Brand A holds more than a third of the market and that the top two brands together hold 60%. For a comparison of pie charts with another way to show parts of a whole, see our guide to pie charts vs tree maps.

4. Bar Charts

Bar charts are column charts turned on their side. The horizontal layout gives long category names room to breathe, which makes bar charts the better choice for employee names, product descriptions, survey questions, or any list with more than a handful of items.

Like column charts, bar charts come in clustered, stacked, and 100% stacked versions. Sorting the data from largest to smallest before you create the chart makes a bar chart much easier to read.

Example: Comparing Employee Performance

Select the data, go to Insert, choose Insert Column or Bar Chart, and select Clustered Bar.

With long labels, a column chart would squeeze or tilt the names. The bar chart keeps every name readable and makes the ratings easy to compare. One quirk to know is that Excel plots the first row of the table at the bottom of a bar chart. To flip it, right-click the vertical axis, choose Format Axis, and check Categories in reverse order.

5. Scatter Charts

Scatter charts, also called XY charts, plot pairs of numbers to show whether two variables are related. Each point represents one observation, placed by its value on the horizontal axis and its value on the vertical axis.

A plain scatter chart shows only the points. Scatter with lines connects them, which is useful when the points follow a sequence. Adding a trendline, from the Chart Elements button, draws the best-fit line through the points and makes a relationship easier to see.

Example: Advertising Spend and Sales

Select the two numeric columns, ad spend and sales, without the month column. Go to Insert, choose Insert Scatter or Bubble Chart, and select Scatter. Then add a linear trendline from Chart Elements.

The points climb from left to right, and the dashed trendline confirms it: months with higher advertising spend also had higher sales. A scatter chart shows a relationship, not proof of cause, but it tells you where to look more closely.

6. Combo Charts

Combo charts combine two chart types in one, such as columns and a line. They are the answer when you need to show two measures that use very different scales, like dollars of sales and a profit margin percentage. On a single axis, the percentage would be a flat line along the bottom.

Example: Combining Sales and Profit Margin

Select the data, go to Insert, choose Insert Combo Chart, and click Create Custom Combo Chart. Set Sales to Clustered Column and Profit margin to Line, and check Secondary Axis for the margin series.

Sales read against the left axis and margin against the right. The chart shows that the strongest sales months, April and June, were also the most profitable, while February's dip hit both.

7. Bubble Charts

Bubble charts extend scatter charts by adding a third measure, shown as the size of each bubble. They are useful for comparing items on three dimensions at once, such as sales, profit, and market size for each product line.

Example: Sales, Profit, and Market Size

Select the three numeric columns in order, horizontal value, vertical value, then bubble size. Go to Insert, choose Insert Scatter or Bubble Chart, and select Bubble. Add data labels and choose to show the product line name from the cells, so every bubble is identified.

Lumber has the largest sales and the biggest market, but earns less profit than Tools or Paint, while Tools earns the most profit of any line. Bubble charts get crowded quickly, so keep them to a handful of items.

Free Excel Chart Builder

Try it with your own numbers. Enter labels and up to two series, choose a chart type, and the builder draws the chart instantly and tells you whether another type would suit your data better. For example, it suggests a line chart for six or more time periods, a bar chart for long labels, and never a pie chart for data with negative values.

When you are happy with it, click Copy to Excel, paste into a blank sheet, select the data without the total row, and press Alt and F1 to create the chart in Excel.

How to Customize an Excel Chart

A chart Excel creates is a starting point. A few minutes of customizing turns it into something ready for a report.

Add or remove elements. Click the chart and use the plus-sign Chart Elements button to turn titles, axis titles, data labels, gridlines, the legend, and trendlines on or off. Less is usually more.

Change the style and colors. The paintbrush Chart Styles button offers ready-made designs and color sets. For a single series, try a color that matches your brand, and use a contrasting color to highlight one important bar by clicking it twice and changing its fill.

Change the chart type. If a chart is not working, right-click it and choose Change Chart Type rather than starting over. Your formatting and data stay in place.

Edit the data range. Right-click the chart and choose Select Data to add or remove series or rows. Better still, format your data as an Excel table before creating the chart, and the chart will grow automatically as you add rows. Our guide to making tables in Excel explains why.

Save a template. Once a chart looks right, right-click it and choose Save as Template. The next time, you can apply the same design in one click from the Templates folder in the Insert Chart dialog.

Common Chart Mistakes to Avoid

Using the wrong chart for the question. A pie chart with twelve slices, or a line chart for categories that are not in time order, makes readers work harder than they should.

Starting a column or bar axis above zero. Bars are compared by their length, so cutting off the bottom of the axis exaggerates small differences. Line charts can start above zero when the change is what matters.

Adding 3D effects and heavy decoration. 3D charts distort values and make them harder to compare. Flat charts with clean labels are easier to read.

Leaving out titles and labels. A chart should make sense without anyone explaining it. Write a title that states the takeaway, such as "Sales grew in every region," and label axes with units.

Cramming too much in. If a chart needs a long legend and six colors, split it into two charts or use a table instead.

Turning Charts Into Dashboards

Once you can build individual charts, the next step is combining them into a dashboard that tells the full story on one screen. Our guide to creating dashboards in Excel and Google Sheets shows how.

If your charts track team performance, projects, or hours, Updoot is business management software that builds those views for you from live data, with no manual updates. It costs $5 per user per month, and you can start a free trial anytime.

Final Thoughts

Excel charts transform raw numbers into insight. Start with clean data, pick the chart that answers your question, and strip away anything that does not help the reader. Column and bar charts compare, line charts show trends, pie charts show parts of a whole, and scatter, combo, and bubble charts reveal relationships. Use the builder above to practice with your own data, and within a few charts, choosing and creating the right one will feel automatic.

Sources

The chart creation steps follow Microsoft's guide, Create a chart from start to finish. All example data in this article is illustrative.